goodfootballerornot

Come on, admit it.  Anyone who saw Rooney go over said or thought the same.

That we are seemingly so reliant on one player for an England result is testament to this site (yes it is).  The players are not as good as the press makes them out to be and certainly not as they all seem to think.  There is a big hole in the squad for the world cup should Rooney miss it.   With others doubtful (Ashley Cole in particular) we are going to be reliant on Gerrard who despite his claims at being able to “turn it on” whenever he wants has been poor this season.  Lampard played in the right way has been brilliant for Chelsea, all be it sporadically.  All is not lost.  But there’s still some bum flexing to do while we wait for the news about an ankle.

Despite it only being a 2-0 win for England, with the obligatory boos at half time from the morons who seem to think we have some given right to win these games 10-0 and so should be at least 5 up first half, it was telling for me that Capello had to have a go at Rooney and Cole for not playing as they were told to. Rooney in particulalr doesnt seem to have a great brain, although Joe Cole is hardly GCSE material, but the fact that two of our top players can’t follow simple instructions probably explains quite a few things.

For years now it has been often suggested (and an observation of my own) that Lampard probably can’t play to a set of orders. Hes too fond of going forward and thus removing the support that Gerrard needs when going forward himself and then Gerrard who is the type of player to track all the way back to his own area finds himself even further out of position to compensate which is why players like Barry, Hargreaves and Carrick are deemed essential to England being successful.

That Rooney feels the need to play so deep is worrying and also makes a stark case for not playing him as a striker, if at all. If he and Gerrard are our best and most creative players then yes they should probably make up the attacking midfield and play one or even two proper strikers up front. Sure you have to drop Lampard but many people have been saying that for a long while now and it seems there is a good tactical reason for doing so.

Unfortunatly we wont get that situation I would think, which is a shame as it might pay off with Walcott & Cole wide.

Lets see what happens in the proper match, England do play better against better opponents and hopefully the players wont be too intimidated by the supposed England fans and past recent history and make a mess of it.  But lets remember Croatia are ranked fifth in the world, England fifteenth, a draw is a good result frankly.

Well the press have certainly started to whinge about Capello, well they would as thats all they do. Although I think hes making a bit of an arse of the job so far he is an excellent coach and its going to take him a while to get any sort of shine on the turds hes picking.

Lets look at the stats first. Czech Republic 8th in the World, England 14th. So from that stat alone a draw was a good result for us. If you even think about saying we are better than them, no we are not, if we were our ranking wouldnt be so piss poor would it now. So for a start if the fans stop thinking that we should be winning these games comfortably and gain a bit of perspective then perhaps they wouldn’t feel the need to boo the team just because we aren’t winning 8-0 at Wembly.

This should have been Beckhams last start for England. He is without doubt still one of the best dead ball players around. But unless the rules change to allow a player to come on to take a free kick or corner he has no role to play anymore. Embarrassingly slow at times.

Lampard and Gerrard, really do we still have to talk about this? Yes! Unfortunately its obvious to everyone bar an England manager and Frank Lampard that Gerrard is the better player and should be played in the center as an attacking midfielder. We actually have 2 players who can play on the left wing, Joe Cole and Stewart Downing, yes I know Downing isn’t a world beater but he sticks to the left, can pass and if he cant cross well all the time he does at least know where the damm left side of the pitch is. For the right Bently should have been starting and Lennon is a definite candidate, but there are plenty of others who could play on that side, hell even Gerrard has played there with some success for Liverpool. Despite Capellos protestations Gerrard was seemingly playing on the left and coming into the centre a lot, with a fit Joe Cole why on earth put Gerrard there? Ashely Cole can come forward but we will get stuffed on the counter by the good teams if he plays too far forward all the time to cover the left.

If your playing Gerrard as the creative midfielder why do you need Rooney doing the same damm thing seemingly? We need goals and better constructed ones at that. Rooney is practically a defensive midfielder at times, maddness for a striker. We have plenty of creative options in Gerrard, Cole and Bently, if hes going to play he needs to play as a striker. Hes not Marco Van Basten good, lets get that straight. Hes playing far too deep and not scoring or setting much up.

Wes Brown is not a better option than Johnson and certainly not as good as Micah Richards. If Richards doesn’t get back into the senior team now then we are going to suffer badly.

Finally Terry as Captain, well as a defender he had a fairly pants game and was made to look inadequate by Baros. As for Captain, he barely seemed in control of the defense let alone adding anything to the team as a whole. So why is he Captain again?

Can someone please give Capello a DVD player and copies of all of England’s games for the last five years. Because it seems he hasn’t bothered to review old footage to see for himself what we already know doesn’t work. He is trying to get us to play a more possesion game up front rather than a hoof, but we still seem to get panicky and resort to the hoof.

So the great Italian hope has gone and picked Terry as “permanent” captain. Bugger. There are fewer examples of a more obnoxious football personality than him, Rooney and Cashley Cole are probably worse, so why pick him? Ferdinand is the better player by far in defense and Gerrard is also an example of one of our few more versatile and tacticaly aware players, but he chooses the clogger. Baffling. I can only think that hes got such poor material to work with that its going to need a dressing room bully to sort some heads out, god help us. The Captaincy is a joke anyhow and should just be given to the most capped player, now Terry can’t be dropped. So if he has a bad season then what? I had hoped Capello would be picking players on merit to fit a system but this Captaincy malarky has put paid to that idea, not to mention he hasn’t picked farther outside of the squads McClown did. Again baffling. I had great hopes for Capello, but frankly this is a dismal choice. His squad selection for a meaningless friendly is totally uninspiring and stale. I can understand not wanting to return to Svens method of just giving out single caps like sweets but we have a fair few exiting new untried or barely tried options and some others who deserve a look-in. Instead we get the same old players who have proven they cant hack it. Granted Capellos a better coach and tactician than the ginger clown was but it would have been nice to at least try some other players.

Also thanks to ITV screwing themselves up and loosing football coverage, with help from the BBC who refused to deal with them and share, thanks. Now we now have to pay an extra subscription for Sentanta to watch games, England as well as PL. The chuckle heads in the competition commission and the government might want to think that if they want competition it should at least be made available to non subscription channels. Theres more than enough money in the game, the players can take a pay cut and have less paid for their contracts if the money is tight, better that so the fans can watch the game without being screwed over.